Live from OTC – Conferences and Business Development

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No errors. No headaches. Learn more at rigor.us. Leak is in the showdotes. We're here at OTC, and before we get to talking to our guests, I want to give a big shout-out to the Offshore Technology Conference for allowing us to be here.

Even bigger thanks to Fithering for sponsoring the OTC podcast pervillian. Fithering is the global B2B marketing and communications agency, and they wrote me a bunch of copies. I'm not going to read. Bottom line is, if you need help marketing your online guests, reach out to Fithering. Their link will also be in the show notes.

And speaking of rigor, I happen to have Michael and Nicole are both here from Rigger. How y'all doing guys? Good. Thank you. Absolutely perfect. Yeah.

And Michael, we just discussed how you're leaving early and leaving everybody else here. I want to talk about conferences and business development. You as a team attend a lot of conferences, a lot of trade shows, and there has to be a return on your investment other than playing golf and eating bad food. So let's talk a little bit about, when you look at a conference, what's one of the first things you think of when you judge whether you should exhibit or attend?

Well, I would like to say budget, but it never is. It is more where are we going and what are we about to see and what we're about to experience. And we are very deliberate when we're picking places, because in most cases it's the places where our existing clients and prospect clients are. So we want to make sure that we're getting a chance to reconnect with them while we are at the conference, because it's the best venue then for them to show up and see the industry.

Because some of them are not overly active on the marketing side of the things. And we want to invite them and share the experiences. And it's a great opportunity for PR and marketing, generally speaking. Yeah. Yeah. When we speaking with some prospects and asking what kind of events they're attending and

what their opinion, because it's very important to understand the entire attitude, atmosphere in each event, and each event is different. So you pick conferences based on if your prospects and customers are attending, or do you pick conferences based upon it's the type of conference that coincides with your business? I would say both. I would agree.

Yeah, it is both. And we also like to see great people. So if you are in the places where your clients are, you have to be there. We also want to plan events where we have a lot of prospect clients. So where the industry is, and it's always good actually to visit any and every conference at least once.

So then you have the direct experience. And after that, you can make a decision whether it's there is an ROI, but speaking of ROI, just a quick segue, you never know right after it where there is an ROI, because the cycle of when a prospect becomes a client involves in some cases, months. In some cases, it can be years depending on the industry, a cycle specifically, and depending on the interests.

And it's always to portray and communicate that you're human. So this is an important part because you cannot really see people behind the screen of the computer, although Zoom allows to do that. But an in-person communication is very hard to replace. Boy, this is a perfect, perfect segue. So Nicole, what you just described is something that we deal with as well, where sometimes

the benefits from going to a conference may not appear to a year or two later. How do you convince Michael, who's the CEO, to allow you to have budget to go to conferences and you're not able to show an immediate ROI? Well, I gotta tell you that I'm lucky. I don't have to convince him. He's the one who's coming up with the ideas.

Why don't we go there, guys? And I think that's a major thing. And it's a message actually to CEOs and COOs that you got to open up sort of your view about the world and do not necessarily hide behind the desks and the computers and listen to your marketing manager and marketing officers and chief marketing officers or anybody who's in your marketing communication department because these guys quite often know because

they follow the LinkedIn on a regular basis to follow other social media platforms that they know what's going on. So if they ask you, can we go there because there will be a benefit for all of us? Be open-minded. Yeah, we try different approaches to marketing, like a digital marketing, traditional advertising. But what we can see, again, from our experience and from our market, that the exhibitions

is number one source of leads and number one source of PR and we need to be in front of people, need to meet with people and show face to face what we have and how we can help. So in some cases, we have a conflict and we need to split our team in two or three groups to participate in two or three events simultaneously because they, for some reason, everyone wants to have a show in September, May and I believe February. So those are kind of crazy months and you couldn't be like in different points everywhere

simultaneously. So lots of preparation, of course, but first of all, every single year we sit down and build a calendar, understanding where we're going and what will be a team for each event. And don't worry about the budget. I have never heard anybody say that ever and it's always recorded. All the listeners, all the sales people that are listening are so jealous right now and

I know your marketing team, it's Dasha, right? I don't know how she puts out so much work for one person, but she does, she puts out a lot of work. She's great to work with. Okay, so when you think about planning for a conference, let's say you get an exhibit at a conference, do you plan ahead of time to reach out to prospects and invite them

to your booth? Do you just set up your booth? Like what is the process you all use to make sure that it's worth your time and money and that you actually get in front of people that could buy your service? Yeah, definitely. We have a pre-show activity in social media and again, number one social media platform

for us is LinkedIn and we're preparing a campaign probably months before the event and starting inviting and promoting the event to our audience. And of course, this will require some preparation, some video or some specific messages and we do this every single time we invite people to our booth and ask them to stop by and talk. Yeah, we make everyone aware of SAP as soon as we know that there's going to be an event. We know that everybody is busy, we try not to start inviting people too soon, so we try

to balance it out depending on the scale of the event and number of potential people that can be there. But generally, yes, so it all starts with a plan and a budget. Yeah, and we invite our clients and we invite prospects because this is probably the easiest way how to meet with people in person and actually say, for example, to yesterday we run two demos with one person was from Trindade and Tobaga, another person was from Houston.

But again, it's just a great platform where you can sit down with lots of different people and talk. And especially remote people, right? So it's important for many to actually show up here and the international events specifically interesting for us because we might have talked to somebody already online, but then we are the event, they are the event.

It's the best opportunity for us to meet in person and build or build on the existing relationship more trust so that then we can then plan our next steps. This venue, OTC, as well as other conferences that we're attending provides this opportunity. Yeah, and for example, yesterday we shook hands with our client from Saudi Arabia, we had no chance to meet personally before. So they purchased the install rigger, they started using it and here we go.

And we meet a lot of interesting people again, guys, how can you include in your ROI calculation the fact that you can meet with the trade commissioners with some suppliers that you never get to talk to. And then here we are, we're all the same event. And the show is providing lots of different ideas how to develop business, what is the trend, who is showing up, what people showing up, what kind of technology developing.

Because what we see here today, there are lots of robots and lots of digitalization and digital transformation happening in all different aspects. I'm talking about automation, equipment, industrial robots, and of course software. All right, so, and I love this, it's a great conversation actually guys. So you've identified the conferences you're going to attend either by scouting them out ahead of time, then you have a strategy to let prospects and existing clients know you're going to be there.

Then you set up booth space. What happens when let's say prospects come to your booth? Do you try to sell them something? Do you try to educate them? Do you just try to get to know them? Like what happens when a prospect walks up?

Or you should try it yourself, Mark. So that's the best experience. You know what, I will. Please, please do. And it's an in-person communication. So somebody stops by, they may be shy or they may be outgoing.

So depends on a person that is on the other side. But we also stay curious and ask questions. Or what is it that they would like to learn about? Us being a software platform that provides a lot of different solutions and you've done a great job listing all of them. At the beginning I was very impressed.

I have to give Dasha credit for that. She helped me write that. There you go. Absolutely perfect. That's probably the best description what we had. And based on what the person's core needs or pain points

or whatever they're looking for, we can then structure our conversation. There is no point of having any demo until we know a little bit better each other. And then after that we can focus on some specific aspects of that. So there is no sale going on because it is not about the sale as a result or it usually is an outcome. I would rather call it a successful completion of interaction long term

when everybody knows what to expect of each other and what is it that we do we can successfully explain. And the person who's looking for something also is able to explain and hear what we can help them with. Yeah and again we're not expecting any contract signing and then exhibition. We usually...

We don't mind though but it's okay. Yeah yeah sometimes it happens. Sometimes we have kind of confirmation and the final decision happened in here because we check hands and that happens a couple times. But usually we start follow-uping and it's a process

and the best case scenario it could be months but usually it's kind of a years. So say for example we started working with Louisiana a year ago I believe a couple years ago and only right now we're starting getting clients there. So you don't need to present.

People need to be aware and understand what you're doing and how you're doing. And another important thing you need to be consistent. You need to present at every event number of times then people start trusting you. Nicola you brought something that was super valuable that I want to go back to.

So a lot of sales people want to hurry up and get to the demo and I've coached them for years that the demo is the riskiest part because you get one shot with the demo and if you don't know enough to make that demo personalized you're going to blow it. I love the fact that you don't try to rush to a demo

that you try to understand what they're dealing with. We decided not to do demo art first time at all because to do the demo we need to understand what they're looking for what they need because show what you have we have a lots of different things what you need tell us. And this is a completely different approach.

And we're not necessarily asking them that way it's just more like inquisitive approach and being honestly curious about what actually people are looking for because we are often referring some of the prospects that show up in our initial conversations to some other solutions because we know of them and that's to you fellows

our fellow software providers out there so we know about you we love you and we refer to you some of our prospects because you may be better at doing things that they're looking for. That is the hallmark of a professional salesperson is when you tell a prospect no I can't help you

but here's somebody that can more sales people need to understand how to do that. No it's a normal thing for us because again if we see that the client will go to that direction anyways why we need to waste time of the client and for us as well it will be just a bad experience. So yeah definitely it's better to refer the client

to our business partners. All right I'm going to put you on the spot here Nikola when you do a demo do you have a slide with all the logos of your existing clients and if you do is it in the beginning of the demo or is it at the end?

We have a slide with some logos but we do not show it actually right now I don't believe we're even showing it. So you win the gold star that's another one of my pet bees with sales demos is they put the logos of their clients and in the beginning I don't care you did business with I want to understand if you can help me fix the problem

then later if I decide to do business with you maybe I care who else you've done business. I love this y'all are top notch sales people and wait so I know both y'all are MBAs Michael don't you come from an accounting background? I have.

How did you learn to sell from the those two skills don't usually go together? You know this is why he is no longer an accounting. Naturally. Oh is that what it was he wasn't good at it. Naturally and it was like I believe the main skill

of sales is just to understand people and try to understand how you can help them and that's it. I agree that's a good sales person as a problem solver and helps their clients right and you end up becoming a trusted advisor and you never want to damage that relationship

by trying to make somebody buy something they don't need or what that's not a good sales person. All right so back to the conferences. So is there a process y'all use when you wind down? You've identified the conference that you're going to you set up your booth you've done social campaigns

to let prospects and existing clients know you're there. You educate people at your booths and maybe if it needs to go further you do a demo right and every now then you get a handshake deal. Now the conference is over it's the last day of the conference is there something y'all do post conference?

No I'd like to back to the event itself. So we go through the list of the attendees like all the companies who probably will be interested in and we meet with them. So we're not only sitting and waiting aggressively waiting for when people coming to us but we trying to be proactive

and educate ourselves about what our potential prospect offering to their clients what they presenting and how they look like. So it's most important for us as well. So we see okay this is like a 25 companies who exhibiting at this event we'd like to meet with them.

That's awesome so you build basically a target list that's right to make sure to go at least have an introduction and eventually develop those relationships for that's genius and both if you don't know most conferences publish who's exhibiting and so when you get close toward the conference date you can see who's there and you can put together a target list like Michael's talking about.

Another trick which we use and again it's not a secret we like to position our booth strategically and sometimes in front of our prospect. That's genius that's so genius. Well I mean just here's the story there's a real anecdotal evidence that people are learning from our presentation when it runs

on the TV when we're at the booth. So we have in quite often guys on the other side there may not necessarily be our target audience but they may be a supplier of sorts and then it's very interesting then by the end of the day two or three they come by and say oh I understand what you guys are doing

because the presentation runs and is explanatory enough and they then are able to understand completely what we do and then they say we might be able to use it or we might know somebody who might benefit from the solution that you guys are providing. I love that so it's almost a little bit of guerrilla marketing

in that you know that other people walk by seeing what's going on on your displays and knowing that they're learning about you and arousing their curiosity that's golden. Which means that you need to have a very well-prepared presentation and you think about the people that maybe just try to ask or may not have enough time to ask

but still I wanted to kind of look at it from a distance and learn about what you do without even asking any questions. And we've been guilty in one of the conference we just put not only video but the sound as well and people like on day three ask okay guys can you turn it off? So note to everybody that wants to copy this

be careful with sound in their conference but you know I mean even that even an audio track if you could design it or as quick and easy to comprehend might be something good to try as people walk it by. Yeah and we use real people's voices yeah. The other thing I think y'all do extremely well is your website

is ridiculously easy to understand exactly what you do. Like I'm not navigating through 37 pages your home page just explains what you do it's very easy. I love the fact that people can come by your booth listen learn a little bit and they hit your website it just reinforces the learning.

I wish more companies had a sales approach to their website not so much a marketing approach where they make their website a catalog. Thank you thank you Mark. We've been working on it for a while and it does take time. That should be here. Yeah who does the Dasha thank you Dasha if you're going to be

when you're going to be listening to this one. Hey in audience if y'all are listening to this in the evening then you're drinking you can make it a drinking game. Every time you hear us mention Dasha you have to take a drink. I like that. She may not like that but she's not here.

Well but she's always online so you can find her on LinkedIn. If you don't know how to find just shoot us an email or just kind of follow us and you will be able to see her there. Yeah hey in audience the links to both Nikolai and Michael's LinkedIn profile will be in the show notes and Rigger's always been in the show notes

which is the sponsor of this show. Okay so target list that is that is genius such a simple thing that that is already out there. The show is winding up it's any down you're packing up. Are there follow-up items that y'all do typically after a conference? It's a very good question.

We follow-up is just kind of a bitten path I think and a lot of people if you just talk to it's not necessarily we don't call it a follow-up we just continue relationship building. That's what I would frame it as. It's not like we've seen that before like here's a follow-up on such and such thing.

For us the most important thing actually to learn about the person so that when we reach out after the event we're not just only following up quote unquote but we are providing additional information or resource or answering a question or leading to something that we have learned or are pinging on something

that we learned about the prospect. It's not like somebody drops a card and then we just kind of send them a message hey how you're doing it's a waste and it's not even respectful. So I think the next step is very important to continue the conversation with somebody and in some cases it doesn't lead anywhere

but in some cases it leads to the next event what we're going to meet. Yeah I do agree with you that those canned follow-up emails six months after you went to the conference are worthless. It's actually a bit of an insult right? I do like the companies and the people that follow up immediately

and one of the things I like the best is when they reach out to me and connect on LinkedIn because now we have a shared connection and I know that both y'all and your company uses LinkedIn exclusive. Actually y'all are really good on LinkedIn. You can't take a picture with Michael and five minutes later it's not on LinkedIn some with a bunch of stuff tagged.

Yeah it's good. Yeah so y'all are big believers and big users of the social tool LinkedIn. Well people are looking and people are following and we quite often hear the comment when people stop by the booth say yeah guys we're following on LinkedIn and then they tell us more about what they've learned about us from that

then we can tell them. So they're ready so this can be treated as a pre-event or pre-relationship building step. So people are passively learning and passively following and then kind of know more information about us. This is an easier research because it's right there.

Yeah all right so we've talked about your conference and your trade show strategy how you go about it which I think it's as close to perfection as you could possibly get. Now I want to ask your opinions about something. So we're at OTC this is the largest offshore technology conference in the world. The energy and the turnout seems to be really good this year compared to the

last couple of years but have y'all seen the difference between conferences before COVID and then after COVID because what I've seen is it seems like people are a little bit more willing and a little more wanting to connect in person after going through COVID and being in the whole world locked down for a year and a half. Are y'all seeing the same thing?

Absolutely, especially when the COVID like last year for example people were very missing that personal interaction and they'd like to talk you know they stop just to talk to someone. It's completely different out of our industry out of our interests but they want to talk and people require that people need that and we see that the before COVID it was like more formal right now

it's more friendly and you know it's just a natural expression of you know how people feel and what humanity. That's where we're social beings and it looks like this is just reinforces whole COVID thing helped us to reinforce who we are. No I agree as much as I hate going through it in some ways it made some nice differences the other thing is the entire world figure out how to do a

Zoom call properly right? That's a benefit yeah. All right guys it's about time to get out of here. Talking about Zoom call and again this is again a number one practice for our company internally we always turn camera on. Yeah I agree and always make sure you have decent lighting and decent audio.

You don't have to spend a lot of money if nothing else face a window for natural light and turn your camera on put your laptop on a book to get it at eye level so you're not looking up people's nostrils and invest in a $10 microphone and it makes all the difference in the world. All right so guys this has been great we've loved the support of your show I know you gotta go back to work.

This is the point where we typically do a product review however we have no product to review if you want to send us something it has to be something Gadgety right? It can't be a mud pump or fire extinguisher so we're not reviewing heavy steel just something Gadgety that maybe sales and marketing people use out in the field.

If you want to connect with myself and Matt and if you're wondering where Matt is he's back at OGGN corporate headquarters we're doing a major announcement today it's to be a first for the oil and gas industry by the time you hear this it will already be out so I'm gonna go ahead and tell you OGGN is launching the first DE&I oil and gas podcast in the world. The press release to go out by the time you hear this the podcast will already be

out there. We believe that diversity, equity, and inclusion is something that's super important but we also believe that there's people and companies out there that misuse it and we're trying to correct all that. So once again it's the world's first all gas DE&I podcast. Matt's out running the press releases and bringing reporters in.

If you want to connect with myself or Matt all of our connections for all our socials are on the show notes same way with the Rigger Guys Michael and Nikolai both of your LinkedIn links will be there as well so just scroll up and left and if you're an IONS or Android you can connect with anything. Our sales and marketing insider groups come in this fall stay tuned for that it's gonna be a lot of fun.

Now guys actually this is really good and I'm gonna catch you off guard here typically Matt and I do either a LinkedIn tip or LinkedIn fail each week. Do you have a tip for somebody on how to properly use LinkedIn? I believe Michael have a few. Well the tip is just do it consistently and use artificial intelligence to do the spell check. I love it. You know you're so right. What a perfect way to sign off.

Guys thanks for your time this has been great. Thank you. Yeah so remember make a difference and not a sale. Check us out next week for another enriching and cheeky episode of Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing podcast. A production of the Oil and Gas Global Network. Learn more at OGGN.com